“Do What Ya Can with What Ya Got” vs. “All Work and No Play”

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What can ya do with all these big long daylight hours? I’ll tell ya! You can keep going and going. Pile it on! …Even during the work week!

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I don’t want to jinx anything, but I had to laugh at an email I got today. And I have to share it with you.

To set the stage, I haven’t gone on a Fun Ride yet this season. Sure, I’ve done a couple errand runs and fitness blasts, but I like to do a springtime picnic ride, for instance. Hasn’t happened.

I haven’t gotten to go fishing yet, either. I’ve been wanting to take the kids, but I didn’t want them to get skunked so I wanted to at least get out and find what’s working and maybe catch something for the bouillabaisse.

Also, pal John (RadNord) and I wanted to do a comparison test ride of his two sweet custom Nobilette rigid mtbikes, one a 26er, the other a 29er with same specs otherwise. We’re about the same size, so it should work dandy. They’re a bit like my old MB1, only much better, so this would be a chance for me to see what that is like. I’ve never ridden a custom anything, and, indeed, my MB1 is the only mtbike I’ve ever ridden. I’m no mtbike expert but maybe I’d make a good victim to see what stepping up to such bikes is like, and it might make for a neat OYB report.

So we were FINALLY going to meet at the Poto this week and ride and trade.

I also thought of seeing if a couple other guys wanted to join in, with the view of adding shock-fork and full-sus bikes to the mix, for an all-bike shoot-out. We’re all similar in size and temperment (“sketchy”?) and they seemed game, but how likely was it that everyone could find time at the same time? I put the idea to another pal and here’s what I got…

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Jeff, Good to hear from you. I think there has been a change of venue. We are going to ride out my backdoor. I’ve got a couple of test loops set up for the bicycle shoot-out. There is some fairly tight single track, some dirt roads and some fast, flowing single track. Gary is also coming with his full-sus 26″ bike and another friend is bringing a full-sus 29er. My neighbor tells me he has been catching some slab sized bluegills. I’ll find out today what he’s using for bait. I cleared the path to the beach in case anyone wants to swim. You can try my crossbow if you like before you leave. Finally, I’m firing up the BBQ grill for dinner and will have a cooler full of beer. See you tomorrow, Dave.

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As the beer ad says…

HERE WE GO! : )

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NEXT DAY UPDATE…

The Combination Plate with Adjustable Seatpost via Tour de Jessop and the Buffet Stage Race

…or…

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” — Teddy Roosevelt

Our show went off without a hitch. And it kept growing, snowballing with Launch-of-Summer fun.

I showed up early and went fishing — caught undersized bass and pike. Dave has a nice pad — he said he was busy cooking and listed the upcoming menu (many Spanish names, venison, shrimp…). I could feel the fun momentum starting.

The first new addition to our show was setting free the turtle. I found a box turtle up north a month ago and we’d been keeping it in a sandbox (with shelter) and feeding it worms. They’re the neatest, cutest things but they’re scarce. I was going to return “Turts” on our next trip north, after giving the kids a chance to care for it and draw it and such. But it didn’t eat anything more than a few worms so I decided not to wait and to let it go in the dirt-road woodlands near Dave’s, and that’s what I did. We found a good place 100 yards from their house and watched it lumber away.

After work hours the dudes showed up, along with bikes upon bikes, no two formats the same.

Dave just cut some fresh singletrack on friend’s land next door so we did a few mile laps of woodsy pond overlooks and ridges. Then we started trading bikes.

After that we headed off down the road to bigger trails in the “Pinckney rec area.” These guys are all local. We’d be on a big trail for awhile then suddenly cut off onto a barely visible singletrack. Or we’d ride a road a ways then across a plowed field and into the trackless woods. A little zigzagging later we’d be onto another micro-track. We stopped on a low plank path over a creek flowing with watercress. We’re all closed in with green. “I have a treestand right over there.” This is it, our backdoor, it’s what we got, right here. What more do we need?

The bike-trading kept apace.

I hopped from 26-year-old oldschool custom steel to carbon full-sus to ti with a passive rear shock to brand new custom 29er steel to dual 29er carbon full-sus to rigid ti…and back again.

I’d never even ridden a bike with disk-brakes. These were all news to me. It was neat feeling their differences. The steel bikes seemed a bit heavy and maybe not so responsive in a way — they had big tractor tires. Yet they handled best for me. They were steady on a line. Everything was WYSIWYG, point’n’shoot. The sus bikes were more like motorcycles, but their handling was light — like short skis compared to the long rails of the rigid bikes. Maybe it’s partly because their tires were harer, with less tread. The Trek Top Fuel full-sus could be thrown anywhere and would slide yet stay in control. I found that out coming into a corner too fast — what joy, what relief! Mostly, I found the disk-brakes to be too touchy. Yet oldschool calipers did seem less ergo, with levers that sometimes had a lot of resistance in them, making them a bit too coarse. The Top Fuel had really loose brakes that you had to flatten before they’d bite—that ended up working the best for me.

The only modes we were missing were SS and fixie. I wonder what they’re like…

In the end it was funny what I noticed most: seat height. The Top Fuel was a half inch too low and my power went away pronto (though it handled great). One had a seat a half inch too high and I just couldn’t hardly feel the bike anymore — getting thru tight twisties was more a remote experience and it would’ve been easy to make mistakes. Bar height didn’t seem to affect me so much — a high bar seeming more moto like. A wide bar seemed a bit crazy. One bike had superlow bars — they seemed OK but maybe a bit crazy, too. In general the dual-sus 26 Top Fuel seemed most fun. But the dual-sus Gary Fisher carbon 29er seemed the smoothest. Tire pressure seemed like a big deal in the rigid bikes — I wanted them soft. Oh! –And the shifters were all pretty super. Far better than my old thumb-breakin’ thumbies. I did notice that neither grip-shifter bike wanted to do a forced drop into the granny under pressure. No can do. The trigger-guns all popped into whatever you wanted, whenever, without effort. I didn’t so much like the touchy brakes but all the light-touch shifters were super. The 29ers did roll noticeably smoother — I’d think bigger picture for such bikes — long days with less technical. It’s neat with the sus-bikes to be able to lock them out. I’ve never had sus and wouldn’t know where to start in dialing it in or maintaining it but I heard a fair bit of talk about pressures and negative pressures.

I could be happy on any of the bikes. I would’ve only had to dial them in: start with seat-height then go to bar-width and bar-height then tire pressure wherever you’re rigid. Next time I’ll bring my MB1!

Our host peeled off early and when we got back to his place there was grill smoke on the deck. We kept trading bikes and riding backdoor laps. Some nuts rode stairway and porch laps around the house, deck and patio. Beers were had. Then many courses of fine food. Then more laps, with more stairs. These were “Jessop Laps” — ride the fresh-cut mile yard trail between beers and plates of food. Tour de Buffet. “We had a party and a bike race broke out.” Another guy showed up with a fine new Swift canoe on his van (composite gunnels) and started riding laps, trading bikes. Dave’s kids busted out their bikes, too. His wife joined in with the socializing.

Then we got the crossbow out — an Excalibur recurve. Dave said “It works” and he’s never changed a thing, same arrows that came with it. It keeps getting deer year after year so why fuss? It was pretty cool. I put a couple bolts in the breadbasket of his styrodeer. …Like a slug-gun for the suburbs, I’m thinking. They live out where lakes, swamps and woodsy hills ring the landscape all intertwined. Dave and his pals have blinds and treestands everywhere, often accessing them by canoe. Lots of their hunts seem to involve paddling and stalking.

OK…as we went to get the arrows, our jaws dropped. There on the garden stairs was TURTS! She had dug a hole and was laying eggs! Holy smokes! She had walked 100 yards up a steep hill. Amazing. We watched them drop, almost as big as hen’s eggs. I’d never seen such a thing. And the world needs more box turtles. So Dave will put a basket over the nest until they hatch, to keep them from the coons.

Pretty soon it got dark and folks had to go to work the next day so the party got small. Then came the idea to go canoeing. Let’s do it! So out we went in two tandems, exploring a big lake I’d never been on. We went who knows where in the dark. Then I traded boats in the middle of the lake — might as well keep testing! Both boats seemed fine, one old, one new. The new Swift was surely prettier, though, with its wood outer gunnel and molded stiff carbon/kevlar weave inner gunnel. Bull frogs drummed nearby, sometimes echoing and amplifying off of forested shoreline hills.

Backdoor, backdoor, here we are in our yard — do what ya can with what ya got where ya are!

What a first day of summer! It was for us, anyway.

Let’s do it again, and next time throw in a swim, with a PDF floaty chair drift session…